Effingham County commissioners on this date approved a $1.8 budget for the fiscal year that began Sept. 1. The vote was 3-1, with Commissioner Roy Page casting the dissenting vote. Page said he would have voted to approve the budget if he had been assured of increased recreation spending. After the vote, commissioners pledged to consider amending the budget later to increase recreation spending. Asked if he believed the commission will add funds to the nearly $47,000 allocated for recreation, Page said, “I think they will.”

Source: Savannah Morning News

Oct. 31, 1733

In London, the Earl of Egmont recorded the decision by the Trustees to send to Georgia some of the Salzburger Protestants then temporarily living in Rotterdam after being expelled from Salzburg, Austria:

“A letter was read, requesting that Several hundred Piedmontese Protestants who understand cultivating vines and making Silk might be transported to Georgia at the Trustees charge, they being now at Rotterdam in great distress. We order’d that as many as the Ship will hold more than the English now on board & the Saltsburgers expected Should be taken in, to fill up the Ships compliment, of 75 heads.”

Source: Robert G. McPherson (ed.), The Journal of The Earl of Egmont: Abstract of the Trustees Proceedings for Establishing the Colony of Georgia, 1732-1738

Oct. 30, 1974

A health department official reported on this date that five Effingham County residents had been bitten earlier in the month by rabid raccoons. Harry Zittrouer, an environmental technician for the Eastern Health District of Georgia, said the Effingham residents found baby raccoons near Eden and took them home to care for them as pets. The animals bit two people one day and three others the next, Zittrouer said. The Effingham residents were undergoing a series of injections to counteract the possibility of contracting rabies. Health Department Sanitarian Joseph Provence said 25 cases of rabid raccoons and one of a rabid fox had been reported since June.

Source: Savannah Morning News

Oct. 31, 1731

After subjecting Protestants in the Austrian province of Salzburg to a variety of restrictions and persecutions, Roman Catholic Archbishop Firmian issued a decree in an effort to halt the Lutheran Reformation. Protestants who were not citizens were given eight days to leave Salzburg. Those who were citizens gave up their citizenship and were given two months or less to sell any property before having to leave. As a result, during the winter of 1731-32, over 23,000 Protestants were forced from Salzburg. Their plight became well-publicized in England, and by July 1732 Georgia’s Trustees were offering to send some Salzburgers on charity to the new colony of Georgia.